Squadron is first to include two aircraft serving together

The Navy on Thursday established its first aircraft squadron made up of both traditional helicopters and remotely piloted drones, joining other U.S. services in using the cheaper, virtually indefatigable but controversial unmanned vehicles.

Saying the future is now, the Navy expects the Coronado squadron to make its first deployment in early 2014 on the littoral combat ship Fort Worth, with two Fire Scout unmanned vehicles and one traditional Seahawk helicopter.

The new squadron is Helicopter Maritime Strike 35, “the Magicians.” Its pilots will fly the drones from a control room inside the ship, in addition to their regular piloting duties.

Vice Adm. David Buss, commander of the Navy’s air forces, said the unmanned helicopters — small, boxy, windowless aircraft — can fly for eight hours and travel 110 nautical miles from home base. Already, their infrared cameras can do surveillance. In the future, the Navy plans to put weapons on them.

“That’s some real reach and endurance that we desperately need,” Buss said in a ceremony in a North Island Naval Air Station hangar decorated with a wall-to-ceiling American flag and filled with both active and retired aviators.

“I really believe this is the Navy’s future,” he said. “Because we’re bringing these two capabilities together at a time when we really need both manned and unmanned systems.”

The Magicians squadron will be made up of eight MH-60R Seahawks and 10 MQ-8B Fire Scouts. However, the Fire Scouts will reside at the Rancho Bernardo campus of Northrop Grumman, the defense contractor that designs them, said Cmdr. Christopher Hewlett, the squadron’s commanding officer.

Also, don’t expect to see the 24-foot unmanned helicopters flying over San Diego. A spokesman for Buss’ office said the current plan is to truck the Fire Scout to the ship pier for deployments. Test flights will occur in restricted air space over Point Mugu in Ventura County.

The Navy sees a business case for unmanned aerial vehicles, which have been used extensively by other military branches in Afghanistan for both surveillance and fire power.

The Fire Scout model to be used by the Magicians costs about $10 million, while the price tag for a MH-60 Seahawk is $33 million plus the risk to the lives of the four-person crew.

The Fire Scout has had a shaky performance record as the Navy tested it in Afghanistan and on ships off South America and the African coast. The drone’s surveillance abilities did help catch drug runners and pirates. But after two crashes in 2012, Navy officials called an “operational pause” for the Fire Scout.

A Pentagon report on the drone’s deployment aboard the frigate Halyburton said the craft completed only half its missions.

Buss acknowledged those problems Thursday.

“As with any new system, you work your way through the bugs early on. … We’re getting stronger every day,” he said. “So I would say by the time this squadron deploys …. we will have many of the bugs worked out.”

Defense analyst and author Norman Friedman said the Navy probably wants to test the unmanned Fire Scout and the manned Seahawk side by side to answer the question of which works best for various missions.